


Two Slow Dancers

by betweenheroesandvillains



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Dancing, Gen, Platonic Relationships, Waltzing, love in all its shapes and forms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28301868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenheroesandvillains/pseuds/betweenheroesandvillains
Summary: She counts, half out loud as she has always done, before she sets them in motion. They are a bit slower than the beat but he doesn’t mind. Her turns are smaller, just a few degrees short of the ideal half-turns, but he doesn’t mind. And if she steps on his toes once, her legs not quite as long as his, well. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t even begin to count as payback for what he has done to her.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, andy & booker
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Old Guard Gift Exchange 2020





	Two Slow Dancers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venomPunk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venomPunk/gifts).



It is as if nothing has changed, as if time hasn’t passed and nothing went sour between them. The shift remains the same – the way her hand rests in his, her weight a perfectly balanced counterweight in his arm. She is still not that much shorter than him, not short enough to tuck her under is chin either way, no matter how much he would love it. They are pressed closer together than necessary, Booker can feel her heartbeat against his own sternum.

Her hair is greying. He barely knows how old she was when she died for the first time but these days he thinks she looks the way his mother looked when she died. In her early sixties, maybe. Her dark hair is clearly greying, and the lines around her eyes and mouth are deeply engraved. He likes them, even though he can’t say it out loud in this moment. They are laughter lines rather than signs of worry, and the only thing he wishes is that he could be out there with them, telling dumb jokes and watch the smile light up her face. Instead they meet here, in the too dusty, too big room of a long-abandoned gymnasium, half in secret and half not. He knows at least one of the others is waiting outside, knows that they don’t let Andy drive alone if they don’t have to, not anymore. Not now that she is mortal. He still has 84 years of exile to live through – deservedly so. She has maybe twenty, thirty years left.

Booker shakes his head. There will be time to think about that, but it’s not now. Now, Andy is looking up at him, and her eyes are bright as they have always been as she waits for the tremor going through his muscles that indicates the moment before the first step. He counts under his breath. The music from his phone is tinny, nothing like the chamber orchestras that used to play for them.  
“Four – five – six,” he counts and then pushes her into the turn.  
It is as if they have never stopped waltzing, as if the last time they did it was the night before at some diplomat’s ball. Andy lets him pass easily, matching the energy of his first half-turn by shifting further on her second step. His swing forward takes her with him to her second step, and she makes sure they stay connected through the quiet second half by moving her hip perfectly into the space he leaves for her.

He taught her the steps a lifetime ago, maybe even two. Dancing had always come natural to her, but not in the strict corset of the times. He once watched her, loose-limbed and free and drunk, dance in the flickering light of a fire, and suddenly understood Joe’s charcoal sketches dragging hazily across entire pages because that was the way she moved. Suddenly understood why she had been worshipped as a god.

But the Viennese waltz had robbed her of any elegance. He had seen her hang loosely from Joe’s arm, endlessly annoyed as Joe had tried to explain the steps to her, the way she should have moved. He still remembers her frustration at the fixed form, the limited steps, the ever-similar music. One night he had put her hand on his back, her hand in his hand, because things like these had always made sense to him – the precise ticking of a clockwork, numbers, sheet music. Predictable, algebraic workings. He had slowed down the speed for her, had said her every step out loud. Had started at the very beginning.

Booker still remembers when she used to be wooden, stayed vertical and didn’t quite get around, keeping their turns just a few degrees short. They spent entire nights just trying to solve this particular problem. Him taking smaller steps resulted in a too-quick turn, her taking bigger ones tended to turn into her trying to lead. Then, after dozens of attempts, it had clicked into place like a puzzle piece. How Andy had always tried to go against the music instead of with it, and how, when she once used too much energy for her step in anger, everything had worked out perfectly. Their mutual surprise when they had found themselves halfway around the living room before Booker stumbling into some furniture had stopped them. Their laughter when the solution had turned out to be that easy. He remembers the way he always reminded her, “Follow the line of the dance. Lean into it, move into it. Let your left shoulder pull you back.” The play of muscles in her arms shows him that she is still thinking of it, trying hard to keep the posture but making it look easy.

They move across the floor in a perfectly curved line. Even in the eternally dim light of the building they find their way. Booker has always found waltzing with Andy to be comically close to flying, even though he could never find the right words to explain how so. Both feel like something is pulling him in, or out, the line so clear and so impossible _not_ to follow. Both make him, strangely, idiotically, want to laugh. It bubbles in his chest. It scratches against his throat. He manages to catch it just behind his teeth, but he could never stop the smile. He never wanted to when dancing with Andy. She always smiled back, always looked almost ferally happy when he twisted her into their first step combination. She still does.

Booker tilts his head, their way of asking if she is ready. The deep, deep lines around her eyes crinkle. She is.   
Their fleckerl is not as fast as it should be, but Andy is still a steady counterweight, their form not breaking, not even as they switch rotations, step towards the right. There used to be more finesse to it, more artfulness, more daring. More figures and faster steps, pivots that would almost send one of them flying. Not much has changed since then. Everything has changed since then.  
He feels more than he hears that the song is coming to an end. Booker changes his grasp, lets Andy twist out with a flourish, brings her back in, twizzles her in the other direction. She is as graceful about it as she was in the mid-eighteen-hundreds.   
They are good. There is no doubt about that.

For a long moment they stand like this, her hand in his hand. He can feel er callouses, would probably know her by this touch alone if he had to. The way he misses her is like an open wound every day – he cannot touch it, or even look at it directly, otherwise he would break apart over it. But then she turns towards him, her eyes so big and bright and the minute raise of her eyebrow so achingly familiar.

He wants to tell her everything. He wants to throw himself at her feet and ask for forgiveness but he knows he can’t, that she has forgiven him years and years ago. He wants to ask her if she also remembers every single time they danced together the way he does. He wants to show her how it is all neatly folded up in his memories, snapshots of her and them and all of them. He wants to break open his chest and show her how hollow every moment they are apart is. But he can’t. Of course he can’t.

“One time,” she says. “For old times’ sake.” And how could he ever say no to her? He changes his grasp, leans against her, an active counterweight. She counts, half out loud as she has always done, before she sets them in motion. They are a bit slower than the beat but he doesn’t mind. Her turns are smaller, just a few degrees short of the ideal half-turns, but he doesn’t mind. And if she steps on his toes once, her legs not quite as long as his, well. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t even begin to count as payback for what he has done to her. 

Booker leans into her, against her, follows her lead with ease as he has always done, as he has followed her into every fight and every single death. She gently, insistently pushes him across the dancefloor as if he weighs nothing. Very few things come as natural to Booker as trusting Andy and doing what she instructs him to do. Give himself over to her. The way they used to say, “Just you and me,” and how it was never truer than on the dancefloor, not even when they were the last two soldiers standing on the battleground…

They never had to speak much. There was a time when he thought it was a lovers’ silence like the one between Nicky and Joe. But they were never lovers like that. So he thought they were similar in their misery, just two people cursed to quietly lament all they had lost for eternity. These days he thinks it is neither the one nor the other – but closer to love. Much closer to love.

“Thank you,” he says when she spins him out, and the music must have ended ages ago but he did not notice until this very moment, so lost in this thing they were creating together. Andy doesn’t answer. Still, her eyes sparkle and he knows what she is thinking, can feel the answering echo in his bones. _You and me_ , with all it entails. He wants to pry his mouth open but he thinks he’d have to break all his teeth out of his jaw. All he does instead is open his arms.

He can count the times they have done this on both his hands, each and every one so thoroughly memorised that not even the worst bender has ever been able to undo them. Andy doesn’t hesitate – she never does. Never did, until… well. Booker pushes the thought down, folds his arms over her shoulders as she steps closer. Andy is warm as she has always been, a little sun against the cold that has never quite left him since he first died in the Russian winter. She slots her face against the crook of his neck and Booker feels the familiar sting of tears. They could hide behind their tough love acts for years, decades. But there was never a way to take the genuine care out of it. Even when they called each other assholes and worse. He commits the way she rests her hands on his hips to memory, the line of her legs against his legs and how her shoulder blades dig into his forearms. Breathes it in. Puts everything he has never been able to say into the hug.

They don’t linger after they let go.

The parking lot is almost empty. Several cars away from Booker’s ancient Golf, some slightly-less ancient BMW is parked. Joe is casually leaning against the hood and Booker wants to shout a quip but he _can’t_ , he has no right to. Not yet. Not now.

Andy does not turn back, says no last good-bye. He is glad she doesn’t. It would be too much. He is also glad he can feel her fingers glide past his hand in a last touch. She jumps into the passenger seat with a little less spring than she used to. Booker swallows. He meets Joe’s eyes across the parking lot and nods once, a quiet thanks. Joe raises his hand, and even with his face covered in blood Booker has always known his expression – the glittering eyes that mean he is smiling, even if his face isn’t. He watches the car pull out of the parking lot, watches them drive off and then watches for longer. He tries to engrave the feeling into his heart. Andy in his arms and the dizziness of the fast spinning and the laughter in their throats that never quite made it out. The happiness of the moment. He knows there is sadness on the other side. It will bubble up at some point and he will have to look at it, the way he has been learning in the past handful of years.

But for this one moment he revels in all the love end tenderness he has for Andy, that Andy has for him. Even now. Even after all he has done.


End file.
